A Sassy 17 Year Old & An Unveiled Passion.

Being 17  years old standing in the middle of a foreign country and hearing God tell you to care for His children will stop you dead in your tracks and cause you to weep uncontrollably– I speak from experience. In March of 2009, four thousand eight hundred and
fifty five miles from where I sit now, in a favella called Glebba-B that is s exactly what happened to me. That Spring the Lord awakened a part of my heart I never knew existed.

So I cried harder than I ever had up to that point in my life the  day I had to leave those precious Portuguese babies to come back home to my comfortable house, free education, pantry full of food, home to where I could drive myself to school in my so cool sports car, wear my name brand clothes and obsess over the oh so pressing issues of prom dresses, football quarterbacks, and Friday night plans. Because after all that is how I left good ole Mount Juliet Tennessee.

I boarded my flight and came back home. Everything was the same, almost. One thing however was very different, that thing was me. I was bitter and I was mad. Why did I have all of this? Why was I born in America? Why was I rich and why was I wasting it on Abercrombie Jeans, Ford Mustangs, and Starbucks Frappuccinos? So I so boldly and sassily told my parents to sell my car, I refused to go out to dinner, I stopped shopping and I shut down. When people at school would talk about things such as movies, prom dresses, and football game I rudely explained to them just how trivial and narrow minded they were because children were living in horrible conditions all over the world.  When my parents asked me how my trip was I quickly let them know that they just wouldn’t understand even if I tried to tell them. I even told my parents how selfish and unloving they were for not adopting children and having their own. I lived like this for three months being rude and bitter and irrationally emotional in all the wrong ways.

I lived like this because I had no idea what to do. I was 17. I couldn’t adopt these children: I had no husband,  I was in school, I couldn’t provide for myself much less for someone else. It’s been 7 years almost to the day since I heard God speak to me about His children and I am still not sure what to do. I have all of this passion, all of this emotion, all of this care and I just can’t seem to figure out how to unveil it.

In the last 7 years I’ve visited those sweet Portuguese babies twice once for an entire summer, I’ve danced and I’ve laughed with His Creole children, I’ve played with and I have held hands with His Bengali children, and I walk weekly, submerged in grace, with his Nashville children. I still can’t adopt and I won’t be able to for many years but what I can do is I can love. I can visit. I can pray. I can openly tell you what my heart is feeling. All of those things are me at least in some way following the command I heard that Spring day in Brazil.

These days I still drive a car, I still drink Starbucks Frappuccinos, I still converse over seemingly trivial topics, I still go out to dinner. The difference is those things are not my life or my focus, I’ve seen things that broke my heart in all the best ways and my eyes will never see the same. I don’t have all the blessings that I have because He loves me more– God loves all of His children the same, the Nashville ones, the Creole ones, the Bengali ones, the Portuguese ones, and all the others who I haven’t met. I have the blessings that I have so that I can share them, so that I can bless others.

I still don’t fully understand what His command means or will mean for my life but I do know that He doesn’t just give random passions to random people. He has lit my heart on fire for His children for a specific purpose and even if I spend the rest of my life wresting with those words whispered to me that day I’m ok with that because I’m growing closer to Jesus through all my questions, all my tears, and my wonders.